I was just wondering how difficult is a DIY job on a viper alarm system with remote start and keyless entry if I grabbed the $200 kit offline.

Are there any good guides available?

Also, with my car on a cold start you have to pump the gas pedal while cranking in order for the engine to start. Won't this pose a problem for the remote start?

 

The difficulty level is based on your experience. If you are good following wiring diagrams and are handy with a soldering iron it is fairly simple. If however you are not so good at either it can be a little more difficult. First thing to do is consult the wiring diagrams in a chiltons or here in the tech data section. I always make a little spread sheet with wire color and description. Do not use crimp connectors for your main power connections. This will just lead to gremlins later on. As to the hard cold starting, the remote start obviously can not pump your pedal for you. You may want to address that. Is it a carb setup with mechanical pump? Mine way the same way. The remote start should have an adjustable cank time which may work.

 

My car is a tpi that's what has me stumped. Crank and crank and crank and nothing. But pump the pedal it sputters and starts right up.

 

you should really get the starting issue fixed first because if you take your car to any mechanic they are going to look at your remotestart and blame it for everything including your fading clear coat.

as for the viper systems they can either be programmed for volt sense (meaning they crank for a set period of time and then check the voltage to see if the car is running) or tach sense(you have to hook up a wire to either your coil or a fuel injector signal wire and program it to a set value and the remote start will crank until that value is reached) that latter of the two is the more prefered way because your vehicle takes longer to start on cold days so your garunteed for it to start on the first try everytime, pending no other problems

but as groundrat said crimps, t-taps and scotchlocks should be used as a last resort to soldering. a good place to find wiring diagrams is the12volt.com and bulldogsecurity.com, the bull dog systems suck but they do offer free diagrams, you should always test your wires and just dont assume they are the right ones because they are the right color and in the right area.

 

To be honest, I have no clue where to start with the starting issue.

It never used to have this problem. In fact, before the original engine went out it would usually take a bit more effort on a warm start. But when we dropped the new engine in and the new starter, it worked fine. Then that started went out halfa$$. It worked well enough for a month until I could get as new one, but it had extreme difficulty starting the car. It would take 2 or 3 tries usually to get the engine started.

Now as soon as we put the new one in I noticed you get nothing except for crank on a cold start unless you pump the pedal while cranking. I'll say It's the cold start injector as a wild shot, but I'm stumped on this one. It just seems so wierd that you have to pump the gas on a fuel injected engine...

 

i have never once worked on tpi but i would post in the tpi or tech forum to see if someone can help you with that.

 

I've got a viper alarm system on my car, with all the bells and whistles and whotnot....had it installed about a year ago...

I sat there and watched for almost four hours as the tech at Best Buy ran wires, cut, crimped, and soldered it into place under the dash.

I couldn't even begin to install one myself for I have no electronic experience like that.

I also had some issues with my remote start not wanting to start the car up on the first crank or two because I had some bad injectors not producing enough fuel pressure to fire up immediately.

DEFINATELY get the engine issues fixed first or you will never be happy with the remote start system.

I would also recommend a professional do the install, not tryin to put your abilities down, but hey, if something acts up, now you can blame them